Hello my happy shiny people, I was wondering if anyone on here had ever played with the pic based basic atom nano and more particulairly if anyone could compare that environment to say proton / picbasic etc...

I'm not sure why you would want to work with modules like these. Somebody please clue me in if there are good reasons to do so.

If you are going to work with modules, the various Arduino's provide a lot more features and performance for way less cost. The big advantage is the huge following they have. The number of libraries that have been written to easy interface with many devices is impresive. You can get an Arduino Nano compatible for less than $10, that seems to exceed the cababilities of a $50 Basic Atom.

If using Basic is a requirement, then your options are much more limited. Learn Processing (the Arduiino language), which is easy and almost identical to C and C++, and you will be way ahead in the long run.

Sorry to be down on these, but unless there is some overwhelming force pushing you this way, I generally find it is a lot less work to take advantage of the more mainstream Arduino world.